WWALS Watershed Coalition advocates for conservation and stewardship of the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, Little, and Suwannee River watersheds in south Georgia and north Florida through education, awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen activities.

Even California’s water quality law, the Porter-Cologne Act,
recognizes the challenge. A 2004 addendum about nonpoint source
pollution put it this way: “Current land use management
practices that have resulted in nonpoint source pollution have a
long and complicated physical, economic and political history…
Therefore, it is expected that it will take a significant amount of
time for the [regional water boards] to approve or endorse nonpoint
source control implementation programs.”

“Once the court officially returns the matter to FERC, the
pipeline should cease operations while FERC undertakes the new
analysis,” wrote Elly Benson, lead
attorney for the case Sierra Club just won against Sabal Trail.

She summed up: ”Instead of sacrificing our communities and
environment to build unnecessary pipelines that “set up
surefire profits” for pipeline companies at the expense of
captive ratepayers, the focus should be on transitioning to clean
renewable energy and energy efficiency—especially in the
Sunshine State. Forcing federal agencies to grapple with the true
climate impacts of dirty fossil fuel projects is a big step in the
right direction.”

She leads off this fourth in a WWALS news roundup series
(1,
2,
3) about that case, followed by Gordon
Rogers, Flint Riverkeeper, another party to the case.

WWALS is not a party to that case and does not speak for the
parties, so I can be a cheerleader for them. Shut it down! Let the sun rise!

The conflict in North Georgia is a confusing amalgam of the old and
the new, of state and federal laws, of mountains and streams. Its
cast of characters includes landowners and land managers,
bureaucrats and businessmen, environmentalists and adventure seekers
— and lawyers, plenty of lawyers.

And much of it involves a splitting of legal and philosophical hairs
that would make Mother Nature and Uncle Sam cringe.

Nowhere has this tug-of-war played out more dramatically than on
Georgia’s rivers and streams, where the dispute over what is public
and what is private is as murky as the Chattahoochee River after a
hard rain.